Ocean State Media’s political reporter Ian Donnis moderates a panel discussion focusing on why Americans and Rhode Islanders are so frustrated with government and what can be done about it.
Moderator: Ian Donnis
Panelists: State Representative Megan Cotter, Allan Fung, and Professor Eric Patashnik.
Presented with Ocean State Media
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Ian Donnis is the political reporter for Ocean State Media, which was created through the merger in 2024 of Rhode Island’s NPR and PBS stations. He has reported on Rhode Island politics since 1999. Donnis hosts One on One, a weekly long form interview show, and writes a well-read Friday afternoon political newsletter. He’s been a political debate panelist on all four Rhode Island television stations.State Representative Megan Cotter, a Democrat, was first elected in 2022 to represent District 39 in Exeter, Hopkinton and Richmond in the Rhode Island House of Representatives. She defeated an incumbent who took part in the January 6 rally in Washington. Cotter and her husband Christopher have three children. She works as vice president of sales at Tony’s Seafood, based in Warren and Seekonk, Massachusetts.
Allan Fung served as mayor of Cranston from 2009 until 2021. He was the Republican general election candidate for governor in 2014 and 2018, and he ran for an open seat in Rhode Island’s Second Congressional District in 2022. After announcing his departure from the GOP earlier this year, Fung is now running as an independent for a General Assembly seat from Cranston. He works as a lawyer with the firm of Lepizzera & Laprocina.
Eric Patashnik is Julis-Rabinowitz professor of public policy, professor of political science and director of the Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy at Brown University. He’s also a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author most recently of Countermobilization: Policy Feedback and Backlash in a Polarized Age, which was published in 2023.
